The Yes Men

“The Yes Men” (2003): Really interesting production. It shows that when activism joins originality and sense of humor, this combination of factors entails efficient actions to aware citizens about controversial current affairs or policies. It was very inspiring for me to realize that most part of the times it´s not due to economical/organizational limitations that we can´t develop an activism initiative..but due to imagination limitations. Why don´t you check it out by yourselves: http://theyesmen.org/ ?

AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

Africa is a country (http://africasacountry.com/) is a collaborative blog which aim is to provide a critical approach to representations of Africa in the Western media by using humorous materials to engage people. A different initiative to combine both amusement and social activism started by the journalist and professor Sean Jacobs. Together with professor Jacobs, other seven conspirators, coming from the field of media academy and communication advocacy, work to continue successfully holding this project. The goal of this online platform is to use humour as a potential tool to promote deeper reflections about what kind of values and images are being transmitted by occidental media when talking about Africa. So, we are in front of an ambitious and original way of fighting for a more democratic society, in which several professionals with really interesting backgrounds are involved. 

Africaisacountry´s offered materials are structured around the homepage of this portal; what easier focuses the Internet user attention. Most of the times, the nature of this contents is an hybrid between audiovisual material – pictures and videos – and descriptive writings in English. Information provided by this texts is conceived as an interactive text in which refereed documentation is available for users just by clicking on the links. Different post are organized in categories such as music, television or art; however, we can also find uncategorized materials, as it is the case for varied news. At this point, I´d like to highlight that the pretension of this kind of news is bringing to the public sphere those informations without a concrete commercial interest for global media conglomerates. Those constantly forgotten informations in Eastern newspapers, televisions and radios because of they seem not to take part in what is established as                  “ occidental public affairs”. 

Finally, it is also interesting their effort to cover subjects from different areas of interest. Both stereotypes and simplifications can be present – as they try to show- in music groups, TV series or news discourses. For instance, on this occasion they have dedicated some space on the blog to criticize the South African music group Die Antwood because they consider that: “in videos they use clothes, gold teeth, spliffs and gangsta gesticulations to convey pretty superficial stereotypes about blackness that already over saturate global popular culture” ( Lily Saint, Guest Blogger). The possibility of freely writing a comment about this and the rest of the published entries is given to anyone surfing the net.

What is the "Third Cinema" project?

According to the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema, written in the late 1960s by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino:

“Third Cinema rejects the view of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression, seeing the director instead as part of a collective; it appeals to the masses by presenting the truth and inspiring aggressive activity”

Third Cinema is a relative new and original idea based on the conception of cinema as aesthetically and politically revolutionary practice, for facilitating social and political change. We can categorize it as a militant cinema which aim is to enable expression for dissident voices. Following with this idea we have initiate ourselves on the reflection about the subaltern, a concept to explore cultural dimensions of power and subjugation. “Can the subaltern speak?” The subaltern often is destined to keep a marginalize position in society. This means that they seem not to appear in mass media, or, if they do, they are usually represented under the wrong values – for instance, as promoters of violent situations-, what negatively influences their image in social imagination. So, the aim of Third Cinema is to use technology to give a voice to those marginalized groups who don´t have it.

This Third Cinema is different from Second and First cinema in many features. There is a constant process of experimentation in the way of producing this films, they can be recognized just for their technical appearance. Cinema is not conceived as spectacle – as it is the case for First Cinema-, and the action is not structured around the hero; main characters in this kind of cinema are inspired by those anonymous groups suffering from poverty and social prejudice. However, Second Cinema is experimental and potentially revolutionary, what makes it closer to Third Cinema, the main difference between them is that Second Cinema doesn´t take the same kind of risk about film making-process and argument.

First, Second and Third Cinema do not correspond to geographical areas – there is Third Cinema in the first world and First Cinema in the third world -. And Third Cinema is not simply opposite to the others two Cinemas, but it bets for a collaboration among these different methods for making films. There is a characteristic group of audience for each one, and, paradoxically, First Cinema seems to be the most democratic between them in the sense that while Third Cinema is demanded by an intellectual elite, First Cinema is popular around the world without regarding gender or social status.

According with M. Wayne, four key markers of Third Cinema are: historicity – changes and conflicts that constitute history-, politicization – raising awareness among the oppressed and the exploited-, critical commitment – to political and cultural change-, cultural specificity – Third Cinema´s “ intimacy and familiarity with culture...as a site of political struggle”-.

· In conclusion...

This new film- making method based on revolutionaries audiovisual techniques and non lineal scripts, aims to be critical with the current society by telling stories about marginalized social groups. These kind of films are not stared by famous and successful actors because audience must be focus on the critical approach that the story contains. I consider Third Cinema as an original way to join social activism and art.  

More information about Third Cinema :

http://thirdcinema.blueskylimit.com/thirdcinema.html

When Murdoch found the Indian Dream

Traditionally, the two channels for news information more popular in India were BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN (Cable News Network). However, nowadays the world of news is becoming more and more complicated in this country because of the proliferation of sources that are changing the global news-scape. At the same time that journalism is going through a critical period in most of the occidental democracies, in places like India it is possible to find another situation: mass media, specially if we focus on television, are a growing market. In fact, looking at this market form a global context, we could say that it is equipped with a huge pluralism, for instance, it has over eighteen official languages and seventy-round-the-clock news channels, what means this is the world´s most linguistically diverse media landscape. And future for TV industry in India is promising, in a country where more than 60% of the population live in the countryside, we could conclude that a huge market is still waiting to be connected. In fact, while TV penetration in urban spheres is around 64%, when talking about rural areas this data changes to 19%. So far, number of TV households is 113 million, and broadcasters revenue comes from advertising in 73% and from subscription in 27%.

Satellite Television Asia Region (STAR) is an Asian TV service owned by Rupert Murdoch´s News Corporation. According to the STAR website, their service has more than 300 million viewers in 53 countries and it is watched by approximately 120 million viewers every day. One of India´s most popular Hindi general entertainment channels is STAR plus ( http://www.startv.com.tr/), it was one of the five original STAR TV channels when it launched in 1991, and was dedicated to English language entertainment (which then became STAR World). Murdoch was responsible for introducing the first music television channel in India (Channel V), reality TV series (Lakme Fashion Show) and the adaptation of an international game show ( Who Wants to be a Millionaire?). In order to launch this last mentioned programme he used one of the most popular Bollywood´s film stars to actuate as a presenter, what made it a very successful format among the Indian audience.

So, the question is, are we attending to a Bollywoodization of the news media in India? One important data to take into account is that entertainment and the media sector in this country is projected to be worth twenty nine billion dollars by 2012. In addition, news-entertainment synergies between Hollywood and Bollywood have been institutionalized during the last years. And, the conclusion of this kind of market strategies is that they bet for the three “C” of Indian infotainment: Crime – presentation of the country as a dangerous place-, Cricket – Murdoch´s sport channel-, and Cinema -Bollywood-.

Finally, television can be also contemplated as a new source to democratize the country; for example, in this huge offer of channels we can find some of them, as it is the case for NDTV ( http://www.ndtv.com/), where the quality of contents really cares. So, it is also possible to create a TV for development, apart from that businessmen blinded by millions of revenues.

· In conclusion...

Privatization of Hindi TV has entailed the proliferation of new channels broadcasting different kind of contents. On the one hand, this fact could represent the Indian TV-market aperture to media convergence and desregularization; but, on the other hand, this increasing offer of contents brings to the citizens more information about current affairs, what, at the same time, contributes to democratize the public sphere. Of course, Mr. Murdoch and its News Corporation presence in the Hindi market plays an important role in the Foxilization of news in this country, or, what it´s the same, the rise of infotainment. But, as I have explained before, freedom of expression is being also used for developing serious discourses based on accuracy and pluralism (e.g. NDTV).

Internet Governance Forum: "is there really any power there"?

 Before going more in-depth within the definition, and aims and this entity I would like to start this point by quoting Hintz and Milan´s research, At the margins of Internet governance: grassroots tech groups and communication policy: "Policy fora such us the IGF are believed to have little actual impact and there is deep distrust in their outcomes and in the usefulness of engaging with them. Civil society participation is not expected to lead substantial change. As one of the respondents put it "it is a puppet theatre, internet governance is being decided somewhere else (Microsoft, Cisco, IP international regulation...)" (Interviewee 3 2007)" (1. Hintz, A.,& Milan, S.(2009), "At the margins of Internet governance: grassroots tech groups and communication policy". International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 5: 1&2, pp. 23-38)

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is the most prominent outcome of WISIS, it is defined as a new forum for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on the Internet policy. Its mandate has been to "discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet" (IGF 2006). It is also important to highlight that this institution does not have a decision-making role and cannot negotiate binding agreements but it can set policy agendas. The first meeting of the IGF took place in Athens (Greece) in 2006, and it allowed open debate, advanced WISIS practices and moved closer to "full participation". One innovation has been the establishment of "Dynamic Coalitions" in which members of all stakeholder groups discuss specific Internet policy sub-themes - such as spam, privacy, freedom of expression, linguistic diversity- and try to find common positions. Finally, the IGF Secretariat's activities are funded through extra-budgetary contributions paid into a multi-donor Trust Fund administered by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). All contributions are administered and accounted for in accordance with the United Nations Financial Regulations and Rules and other applicable directives, procedures and practices. The project expenditure is contained in the biennial Financial Report and audited Financial Statements of the United Nations.

We started this point by giving a critical approach towards the IGF as an institution that enables the empowerment of civil society in policy making issues and provides egalitarian debates hold by multistakeholders coming from different fields of society. In this sense, the research published by Hintz and Milan reflects on the fact that there is a lack of engagement and participation in policy advocacy manifested by what they agree to call "grassroots tech groups" (GTG), groups providing alternative communication infrastructure to civil society activists and citizens on a voluntary basis through collective organising principles, with the aim of counteracting commercial as well as state pressures on information content, media access and the privacy of media users. Grassroots tech groups usually offer web-based services such as website hosting, e-mail and mailing list services, chats and other tools such as anonymous re-mailers and instant messaging; or provide platforms for self-production of information. (5. Ídem) So, what it´s kind of contradictory is that although the Free and Open- Source Software (FOSS), which includes systems such as Linux and office software suites, was one of the interesting (and ambiguous) outcomes of the WISIS process, according to the conclusions of the already quoted research, grassroots tech groups trust more in achieving change through practical and technological development than through advocacy. Furthermore, when asked, these groups point to a variety of reasons why they do not participate in policy processes such us WISIS and IGF, in this sense, I would like to quote the following lines:

" The immediate answer of most interviewees (GTG) to the question on whether they would get involved in policy-making processes if invited to is a strong "no". Most suspect that that civil society participation is just "decorative" (Interviewee 3 2007), that the actual decisions are taken elsewhere, that is by corporate and government actors, and that "the invitation would be just for the record, so the institution or the body would gain political and cultural capital" (Interviewee 4 2007). Participation, in that sense, would "legitimize the decisions taken by other agents ( corporations, governments, lobbies, etc.)" (Interviewee 3 2007). Therefore, "we want to maintain a certain distance from this institutional and falsely "democratic" internet [regulation]" (Interviewee 7 2007)" (2. Ídem)